Benetton Group, Place de la Concorde

While most fashion brands use sexy models to sell their clothes, Benetton is known for its not-so-pretty, controversial advertising that depicts the likes of a frail man with AIDS and death row inmates. Though it has toyed with gay vague imagery before, Benetton has never directly dealt with gay themes – until Sisley.

The Italian clothing company's new brand is trying on envelope-pushing ads, one of which looks something like the beginning of a gay porn movie.

Unlike Benetton ads, Sisley's first gay media advertising is sexually charged and out of the closet.

"Sisley is a sexy brand, it's about sex and feeling sexy when you're wearing the product," says Benetton spokesman Mark Major. "There are not a lot of companies in OUT doing this."

Despite the fashion industry's omnipresent use of sex to sell its merchandise – often "forgetting" to include the very clothing they're trying to sell – few have actually used overtly gay imagery. Designers including Calvin Klein, Gucci, Versace, Abercrombie & Fitch and even Benetton itself have only teased consumers with gay vague imagery.

In 1994, Benetton created an ad with two twenty-something men wearing pastel shirts in a cheek-to-cheek embrace that left many wondering if the two were a couple. The ad appeared on billboards and in OUT magazine but the company said they were not supposed to be seen as gay, that they were in fact twins.

The company also ran a TV ad in 1995 with openly lesbian model Jenny Shimizu, with tattoos and short hair. She talks about the dress "that you love more than your boyfriend – but let's not get started on that."

What a difference a decade makes. Now, Benetton is willing to be more upfront about its purpose with those ads. "We were vague about all that," says Major. "If you provide your intentions, it might affect what people see and we want to challenge people to think."

Major takes a much more open position on Sisley's ad strategy. "A lot of (advertisers) in OUT use images that are quasi-gay. We're one of the only ones really positioned to the market, we're not trying to just smooth it over."

As Major explains, Benetton's ad director Oliviero Toscani likes to challenge consumers with his advertising. "His agenda is to push people's thinking. He feels the way sex is a taboo subject in the US is hypocritical and that we're our own worst enemies. Why do we tell children a baby comes from a stork?"